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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25111990">Obituary Crier</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/DetournementArc/pseuds/DetournementArc'>DetournementArc</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Original Work</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Short</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 03:35:13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>582</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25111990</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/DetournementArc/pseuds/DetournementArc</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Remember that you will die, and Remember that you are immortal.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Obituary Crier</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Obituary Criers</p><p>They would have walked the streets in black, crying out mournfully the names of the dead- and some did. Mostly though, it was all online. An account would go up and post as quickly as it could with the help of bot programs, passing on the posts of other felled bot accounts before itself being shuttered by moderators and algorithms. The ghosts of the dead would fill social media feeds, a moving, living tombstone in html code and text.</p><p>We no longer memorialized our dead. Not really. Mourning might happen in the private sanctuary of a family or social group, but nothing beyond that. The reasons for the moratorium on physical funerals was simple enough, the sheer virility of the plague made being witness to death's rites a death sentence in and of itself. Soon though, the act of mourning itself was minimized, tucked away further and further to the back of our collective psyches. Mental health experts on talk shows and newspaper columns opined about the deleterious effects of mass death on a society, how in our sorrow we, a society of mourners, could simply no longer function. A good healthy civilization, they said, should be focused on staying good and healthy. "A nation is only as healthy as its mentality" became the party line.</p><p>And so, in the interest of maintaining the societal and economic health of the nation; laws on the conduct of the obituary came to pass. Any and all memorials ought to be short, quiet, stable and civic-minded affairs that would not upend a social order made so feeble by the ravages of the plague itself. Newspaper obituaries and open funerals were replaced with small plaques you could display in your home, if you were so affluent as to afford it. You could even pay extra for the additional effects of the deceased.</p><p>The results of this were simple. The world looked as lively as ever, like a very well-made up corpse. As we ignored the actual dying all around us, to the plague, and to the people who suddenly vanished under the staccato home invasions of the Civil Security Agency, we could be certain that the whole world could die tomorrow and be entreated to an open casket service.</p><p>The Criers appeared shortly thereafter. They were on all levels denigrated and despised as a terroristic threat to an obviously healthy nation and faced the full extent of the law. In leaked footage of court trials, back in the twilight era of such affairs, which were also shuddered due to the fear of contagions from these lowbrow rabble infecting the civilly decent judges and bailiffs and jurors- the Criers had this to say:</p><p>The State and its keepers have robbed the people of mortality and immortality both. The average, decent-minded citizen had no thought pertaining to their mortality, for there was no death to think of- nor of the closest simulation of immortality we could hope for in the form of elegy and Memoriam. The Good Citizen became not but a flash in the pan with no conception of an existence beyond the brief moments of their existence, people so utterly paleolithic of mind that they could no longer even ponder beyond their homes and tv shows and cubicles, robbed of both Dasein and its lack, held in the equanimity of perfect thoughtlessness.</p><p>And so the Criers would risk vanishing themselves, and cry and cry, to desperately plea with people to remember their own existence.</p>
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